Gunslingers!
Today, we wish to invite you to Blood West early access. Our immersive survival-horror FPS will have you exploring twisted wild west environments, scavenging for supplies, hunting deadly monstrosities, and gaining power to face terrifying bosses. The game is priced at $14.99 in the early access period, and the pioneers getting it in the launch week will also enjoy a special 20% release discount.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1587130/Blood_West/
Note - Blood West game is already feature-complete, polished, and packed with content. The Early Access begins with the first out of three planned expansive areas to explore, each with its own non-linear scenario.
What is Blood West?
Blood West is a stealth shooter inspired by such classics as S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex, or Blood, but also hugely influenced by Crytek's excellent online title - Hunt: Showdown, while being a strictly single-player experience itself. There's a lot of ways to describe it, but it is best that you see for yourself - here's a chunky, 25-minute developer-gameplay, going through one of the first quests and showcasing some basic, and more advanced mechanics:
(No, the protagonist doesn't speak as much in the game as in the video - it's just the commentary that was recorded by Jake Parr, who also voices the Revenant Gunslinger in the game).
To sum up the Blood West experience in a few bulletpoints:
- Blood West is not a non-stop action-focused velocity shooter. It's best taken slow, and thoughtfully, with sneaking, surveying the surroundings, planning your attacks, and going head-first into combat only when you're sure you're at an advantage.
- Combat mechanics in Blood West are more complex than you might expect. Enemies have weak spots (usually the head), and can take a lot of damage before dying, unless you use their vulnerabilities.
- Weapons have different stats, and usually guns that you loot from the enemies or find discarded somewhere, are old and rusty, and won't perform great. There are also different types of ammo, and some are more effective against certain enemy types than the others.
- Your character - the Revenant Gunslinger - gains experience, and levels up. When that happens, you get some skill points to distribute unlocking very useful perks in the character screen. Different perk+weapon combinations allow for very different approaches to the game. Try different playstyles!
That should get you on the right track. Do pay attention in the tutorial area - it's short but it will do a good job introducing you to the basics. Now, we'll let you discover everything else in the game by yourself. Good luck!
Why Early Access?
Blood West is a complex game with some sandbox gameplay, and a lot of moving parts. We would love to see how you'll be playing it, what will be your approach to its many challenges, and what will be your thoughts on the game's world, systems, and general experience.
At Hyperstrange we've had the best of experiences with involving the Steam community in the development process, by including them in our work cycle through Early Access. Games like ELDERBORN and Jupiter Hell wouldn't be what they are today, if it wasn't for your involvement. We want to approach Blood West the same way.
While we have a complete and quite precise vision of the game in our minds, we know we can make it even better by giving ourselves space to work with your feedback. We're hoping to hear from you here, in the Steam Hub Forums, but most of all we're eager to talk with you on Hyperstrange Discord.
How long Blood West will remain in Early Access?
Long story short - we expect to put another 6-8 months into development, before releasing in full, with two substantial content updates, one adding the second of three planned scenarios, and the third adding the final scenario bringing the game to full release.
Why is the demo gone?
Some of you keep asking that question. We've decided to say farewell to the Blood West Demo that we've introduced 4 months ago during Steam Next Fest. While we understand that this will disappoint some of you, we think that the outdated demo did not represent the game properly, and was doing us a disservice. While it did a great job giving Steam players a taste of what Blood West is, it was very limited in terms of content and mechanics, and did not present the level of polish we were aiming for. We don't want anyone to play it and assume that that's all there is to the actual game.
Good luck!
Here begins the Ballad of the Revenant Gunslinger, a wicked soul roaming the curse-tainted frontier, looking for a way to destroy a greater, eldritch evil, holding the land in its clutches. Now, this is your story, too.
Enjoy your time with Blood West, and take back the frontier, gunslingers!
